Effects of Professional Development on Teacher Efficacy: Results of a Randomized Field Trial

We designed a professional development (PD) program to increase the teacher efficacy of mathematics teachers. We randomly assigned 106 grade 6 teachers in one school district to treatment and control conditions in a delayed treatment design. The PD explicitly addressed four sources of teacher efficacy information identified in social cognition theory (Bandura, 1997). Treatment teachers outperformed control group teachers on three measures of teacher efficacy but results were statistically significant only for efficacy for classroom management. We attributed the teacher efficacy effects of the PD (6 % of the variance) to the priority given in the PD to management of classroom discussions and overt attempts by PD leaders to redefine teacher conceptions of classroom success.